Former Ultimate Fighting Championship flyweight champion Nicco Montano has officially been dropped from the roster.
MMAFighting was the first to report that Montano’s run with the promotion had come to an end.
Nicco Montano released by UFC after a short and difficult run in the promotion
Montano, 32, had a complicated stint as a competitor for the UFC. She originally came to fame as a participant in The Ultimate Fighter Season 26. On that installment of the long-running series, the promotion’s women’s flyweight division was established and its first champion was crowned on the show’s finale in December of 2017. Montano navigated through three exhibition fights, made it to the finale, and beat mixed martial arts pioneer and UFC veteran Roxanne Modafferi to become the weight classes titleholder. Then things went downhill from there.
In her first scheduled title defense nine months later at UFC 228 against Valentina Shevchenko, a bad weight cut led to her being hospitalized, and she was then surprisingly stripped of her title soon after. With her history of difficult cuts to make 125-pounds, Montano moved up to bantamweight and had a matchup booked with a former title challenger in Sara McMann in September 2019. An injury forced McMann out of the fight and instead Montano faced a fellow TUF winner in Julianna Pena and lost by unanimous decision.
Following her loss, the Colorado native had five different fight dates with three different opponents fall through over the course of a year. It all lead up to UFC Vegas 33 and her chance to finally get back into the Octagon after over two years away. However, that was unsuccessful as Montano missed her scheduled grace weight by a startling seven pounds. The bout was soon canceled and UFC President Dana White told UFC Arabia after the event:
“I think that no matter what weight class you put her at, she seems to have a hard time making weight. This might not be the sport for her,” he said.
Following another weight miss and before her eventual release, the former King of the Cage champion took to her Instagram to apologize to her fans and noted that as hard as she tried, her body was having a lot of difficulty in cutting the weight for fight night.
“Unfortunately, after years of cutting hard my metabolic system is not catching up with what efforts I’ve been putting in … I have done this cut before but unfortunately it just didn’t work out this time around,” she wrote.
Pena is just 4-3 overall after only competing in the Octagon officially on two occasions. She has won all but two of her fights, including her TUF exhibitions, by decision.
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